the doula formerly known as Earthy Birthy Doula

Yurtbirth

You’ve heard of a homebirth, and you’ve heard of a waterbirth… but have you heard of a yurtbirth? Or even a yurt for that matter? Let’s start with “yurt”.

“A traditional yurt (from the Turkic) or ger (Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt and used as a dwelling by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. The structure comprises an angled assembly or latticework of pieces of wood or bamboo for walls, a door frame, ribs (poles, rafters), and a wheel (crown, compression ring) possibly steam-bent. The roof structure is often self-supporting, but large yurts may have interior posts supporting the crown. The top of the wall of self-supporting yurts is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs. Modern yurts may be permanently built on a wooden platform; they may use modern materials such as steam-bent wooden framing or metal framing, canvas or tarpaulin, Plexiglas dome, wire rope, or radiant insulation.” – wikipedia

Yurts are popping up all over the place, well, maybe just in our friend circle I guess. But either way, they are becoming a more popular structure here in western Canada. In fact, I want a yurt. Lucky for us, a good friend of ours has a yurt we can stay in sometimes. And double lucky, some friends of our friends build yurts, and teach workshops on building yurts!! So if this is a dream of yours too, please go check out Bird Creek Yurts.

So now that we have yurts out of the way, I’m sure you can imagine what a yurtbirth is. One of our friends recently birthed her baby in to the world, in her yurt. Yes, she has a yurt on her property, and she had a yurt waterbirth. We’ll hopefully share a birth story from her view in the near future, but right now I’d like to share the view of the photographer, Michelle Wells. Michelle took some amazing photographs of the process, and I encourage everyone to have a little lookie, and then feel honoured to even be able to look at them (I know I do).

LINDSIE’S HOME WATER BIRTH – IN A YURT WITH BABY IN HER AMNIOTIC SAC . | CALGARY BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY

“So I have to say, this is one of the coolest births that I have ever seen. It was unique in every single way. By unique, I mean incredible and perfect. Knowing that Lindsie was planning to have her baby in her Yurt with lots of wonderful windows, I jokingly asked her if she would have her baby during the day. Amazingly enough, she contacted me at about 4 in the morning to give me a little warning. I arrived there at around 6:30 am just as the sun was rising upon a beautiful warm spring day. I peeked in to the Yurt…read more“

PS… You definitely want to click “read more”, that is where you’ll see all the amazing yurtbirth pictures.